Fig. 16.
5th. This cloud, and its spout, move generally with the course of the counter-trade in the locality—i. e., from some point between S. W. and W., to the eastward, but occasionally a little south of east, deflected by the magnetic wave beneath the belt of showers.
6th. Several exceedingly instructive particulars have been observed and recorded.
a. No wind is felt outside of the track, as those assert who have stood very near it, and its effects show.
b. The track is often as distinctly marked, where it passed through a wood, as if the grubbers had been there with their axes to open a path for a rail-road. The branches of the trees, projecting within its limits, are found twisted and broken off, or stripped of their leaves, while not a leaf is disturbed at the distance of a foot or two on the opposite side of the tree, and outside of the track.
c. As the spout passes over water, the latter seems to boil up and rise to meet it, and flow up its trunk in a continued stream.
d. As it passes over the land, and over buildings, fences, and other movable things, they appear to shoot up, instantaneously, as it were, into the air, and into fragments. If buildings are not destroyed or removed, the doors may be burst open on the leeward side, and gable ends snatched out, and roofs taken off on the same side, while that portion of the building which is to the windward remains unaffected.
e. Articles of clothing, and other light articles, have been carried out of buildings through open doors, or chimneys, or holes made in the roofs, and to a great distance, without any opening being made for the air to blow in.
f. If there be a discharge of electricity up the spout from the earth, like that of lightning, the intense action ceases for a time or entirely.